Thursday, August 14, 2014

Salebarn 3.0 is about giving people better tools for data and appraisal, infrastructure that takes advantage of commodity cloud-based computing services and pushes the world of search and market intelligence to the next level


Over the past few years, we have been [quietly] watching the world of social commerce and how people are beginning to USE the technology.  We do not worship or fear technology; technology is simply a tool, a useful tool.  The technology is interesting ONLY because of how people use it.

At SALEBARN, we are particularly interested in how people will use technology for buying, selling, bidding, appraising, analyzing opportunities provided by markets ... it is fundamentally about legitimate actors on the economic stage practice the science of success, how the best of the best tinker with the Market Based Management engine that powers their growth.  Frankly, we think that the use of larger marketing, financial exchange, auction technology has been paralyzed or poisoned by the cultural and economic malaise that is paralyzing economic growth in general ... except for [or because of] innovative power grabs by fascist bureaucrats around the world, the innovation and growth of the world economy has been stopped in its tracks.

But the world is quietly building its antibodies to fascism by separating into two worlds ... one is populated by the John Galts, who have opted out and basically only participate to the degree they need to ... the other world is populated by the lowmen victims of the entitled classes.  The fascists believe that they can force most of the people in the world into the world that they own, the world of lowmen victims -- the entrepreneurs of the world know that they will never bow to fascism, even if their formerly close friends, family members and professional colleagues choose to give up and think like victims.  

Even if the individuals that make it up are disoriented and behaving like herd animals, the CROWD is alive and well and there are entrepreneurs finding ways to serve it ... those ways are primarily data-driven, cloud-based and accessed with mobile devices ... investing in all of the accoutrements of a large bricks-and-mortar building or even an expensive home is stupid in a world that demands an aggressively mobile, flexible, antifragile mentality.    
Crowd-based data-driven mobile solutions are fundamentally about accelerating the negotiations that are implicit in the information providing by the marketplace ... the POINT of the technology is the crowd and how the crowd is accelerating the negotiation of price and features; it's not technology for technology's sake.  Crowd-driven data is not just about one private market or a chain of markets OR a big auction or even a set of roughly comparable auctions.
Crowd-driven data technology is fundamentally open source, dynamic, agile and disruptive technology that will completely revolutionize the world of marketing, auction and appraisal in a bigger way than online auctions like eBay revolutionized the world of auctions for old tools, antiques and charming knick-knacks -- because the CROWD is alive and developing its own intelligence ... the cluetrain manifesto is finally starting to materialize, even though the majority of populations who are participate in markets will still be entirely clueless and led by the few.  

So what are some of the key components of this technology?
  1. Search technology far beyond the uber-restrictive and arthritic crap provided by google ... Solr, Lucene, Hadoop
  2. Cloud-based commodity big data ... AWS, Rackspace, OpenStack
  3. DISTRIBUTED mobile, wireless, RF, software-defined technology ... 
  4. Intelligence and security ... that reaches into things like cryptography, steganography, defcon, black hat hacking, IDF, Haganah, Mossad-style ... it's not just technology -- at the end of day, there are assholes who simply must die for their crimes ... that means de-clawing, neutering and even assassination of fascists and those who work for them
These are technologies that we will discuss in coming blog posts.





Saturday, February 15, 2014

Salebarn 3.0 ... the highest quality social networking technology for free markets

Friendships matter far more than technology.  Good friends push their friends to become better. The highest QUALITY social network technology is about eliminating the wasted effort and misunderstanding in human networking.

Discovering and nurturing content-driven talent is the foundation of any organization, business, club, association, social network ... people who "bring something to the table," who share valuable content are the basis of why a network of networks matters.  To address the need for a network of people who understand the importance of interlinkages between various networks of experts and afficianodos and tribes of marketers who cater to those networks, Salebarn.com is creating a new program to recruit co-founders ... in many ways this program is similar to those used in different organizations such as Edward D Jones or Gawker.   Co-founders are in business for themselves; the Salebarn.com network infrastructure owned by independent businesses means that they are not by themselves.  
THE STRUCTURE of the SALEBARN.COM NETWORK
Games are fun to play, but they depend upon rules so that the players can enjoy playing the game together.  The rules should recognize that the players will, at times, be very competitive and will aggressively attack new opportunities in ways that other players find threatening. Humans are gregarious; they crave interaction and they value fairness, but competition is the essence of free markets.  It is unrealistic to expect that all of the players are going play the game with the same strategy.   It is unrealistic to expect that there will never be disagreements among the players -- the structure of the network must strive to accelerate the negotiation process that is used to hammer out the disagreements among the competitive players, so that those players can offer the best alternatives, best choices, best prices to the bidders, sellers, buyers and others who get information from the Salebarn.com network.

Recruited co-founders will become owners of the Salebarn.com network by transacting business via the network and paying a very modest and nominal fee to cover their services.  Any profits generated by the network will be reinvested within 12 months; if the network buys any assets, the debts incurred from purchasing those assets will be paid off as soon as practical.   Recruited founders will Salebarn.com as a social media posting tool; they can post as little or as often as they'd like; determining which social media networks to use and timing of their message (e.g. items for sale) so that they optimize the sweet spot of their marketing, analytical and relationship-tuning processes. 
Co-founders will report to their site lead and take direction and advice.

Co-founders will abide by standards to which all Gawker employees and contractors abide.

Attempts to "game" the numbers by nefarious, unethical, or needlessly impolitic behavior (bot nets, false reports, or republishing without linking, in respective example) will result in the termination of a Recruit's contract, at our discretion.
The goal is to discover and train new talent and to pair that talent so that co-founders can build long-term relationships, not to momentarily mine cheap traffic with a rotating pool of collaborators and competitors [to keep the saw sharp].

This opportunity will not be for everyone.  It is anticipated that fewer than 1 in 10, maybe even fewer than 1 in 100, of the co-founders will decide to be involved on a full-time basis over the long-term ... many will decide that there are more optimal career paths and better opportunities elsewhere ... the goal should be to encourage those co-founders to move quickly through the process of discerning their optimal career path and developing their independent business or profession.
FATBAQ (FREQUENTLY-ANTICIPATED-TO-BE-ASKED QUESTIONS)
Q. How many recruited co-founders will you bring on?
A. We're going to start recruiting 25 per day; we'll will try that for four weeks or 20 days (500 recruits total) and then re-evaluate ... we believe that we will need 100 co-founders in order to ensure success in the initial phase of this effort.
Q. How do I become a co-founder?
A. Attend auctioneering college, join NAA, join your State Auctioneer Association ... participate in those organizations, build friendships and partnerships, work at developing a viable going concern.
Q. What happens if a co-founder [or if Salebarn.com] decides that the co-founder is not sufficiently interested to make the relationship successful?
A. We realize that situations and commitments crop up unexpectantly, but if the co-founder goes six weeks without any action, Salebarn.com will give them three "inactivity warnings" ... if there is no response, Salebarn.com will shut down their subsite and recruit another co-founder to fill a niche similar to theirs.
Q. What is a Site Lead? 
A.   Salebarn will have a limited number of top-level sites such as ... Livestock.salebarn.com ... Firearms.salebarn.com ... Equipment.salebarn.com ... a Site Lead is a co-founder who has made a larger upfront investment and has taken leadership for a top-level Site. 
Q. How will the Salebarn.com CONSTITUTION be developed?
A. In a Constitutional Convention ... we will propose a Constitution, then we'll talk about it, then the co-founders that wish to participate will ratify the Constitution.
Q. How will Salebarn.com discourage bad or lazy attempts at marketing or "traffic whoring"?
A. Salebarn.com will be governed by its co-founders according to its Constitution.  The entire governing process will be extremely transparent.
Q. Can a co-founders sub-site feature JUNK ... such as pornography, copyrighted materials, trojans, unfounded slander, pictures of pigs with poop on their balls, 1,000-word posts with only the word "abortion" pasted within, Nick Denton photoshops, or…
A. Nope.  INSTANT termination of the relationship with very limited rights of appeal.  If you choose to behave like an idiot and do not honor the standards of the Salebarn.com community, you do not belong in the Salebarn.com universe.
Q. What's the most important thing to remember?
A. This list of questions is too long already ... we are just getting started with rev 3.0, but we have been having a conversation with a huge mountain of stone for a long time.  QUALITY is what is left when you remove the waste -- delivering quality is like sculpting the statue that is hidden within a block of stone.  Salebarn 3.0 is about delivering quality in social networking technology for free markets.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Choices abound in the world of social media -- look around, try other networks, be patient as they grow, get ready to GO ELSEWHERE.


Facebook's ONLY positive attribute now is its LARGE base of users; and that LARGE base of users attracts others who want the shared content of the users. 

Facebook is still benefiting from the work done five to ten years ago by people, like Jeff Hammerbacher, et al, who built the original "crashwhale-free" infrastructure ... FB ate Twitter's lunch by being reliable at a time when a lot of people were joining social networks and communicating via smartphones (i.e. a BIGGER, safer, friendlier, more reliable network than MySpace or Friendster ever had a prayer of having). 



Facebook has probably taken its market share for granted.  The arrogance of huge success is always difficult to avoid.  The earnest dweebiness of Facebook was cute five years ago, but now it's more than a little old.  The analogy is far from perfect, but it is sort of like how KMart and Sears ran out of gas in the 70s.  Eventually [maybe already], the day will arrive when that large base of users will eventually realize that there are places other than a shabby old KMart/Sears staffed by lame idiots and clueless asshholes who want to dick with the users because they can. 


The quantity and QUALITY of the connectedness possible within a social network matters.   For that reason, social media preference is stickier than beer preference.  It's all about networking ... but social media preference probably not permanent, because there are still different ways to network.   There will always be something better that comes along, but who knows what that might be.  What we know is that Facebook is showing its age.  Facebook's grip on the market relative to any other player might look overwhelming, but it is not so overwhelming when we consider the class of "anything BUT Facebook."  It is quite clear that people want choice.